


if it feels like paradise

by sternenrotz



Series: broken hearts hurt but they make us strong (queer horror verse) [22]
Category: The Horrors (Band)
Genre: Communal Child Rearing, Families of Choice, Future Fic, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Pregnancy, Slice of Life, Trans Female Character, hippie communes?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 12:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15707046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternenrotz/pseuds/sternenrotz
Summary: Dilys overthinks things, but the commune is always there to support each other.





	if it feels like paradise

**Author's Note:**

> titled after "Paradise" by George Ezra.
> 
> set in November 2019. the usual: Rhys is a trans girl and her chosen name is Dilys, Josh eschews labels but uses Spivak pronouns. Faris is agender, she/her, and got rid of the S at the end of her name some time ago.
> 
> at this time, Joe and Dilys' daughter, July, is about two years old, while Josh's eldest child, Hollis, is a little older than a year and a half. Josh and Fari also now have a surrogate baby on the way.

The rain here still smells so different from how it did in London. Dilys thinks about that when she lights up, that petrichor thing where the moisture in the air amplifies the smell of everything else, before the bitter-warm buzz of tobacco overtakes it. She stopped smoking after little July was born, but someone in the house always has a box of cigarettes stashed away in their sock drawer or the kitchen cabinet. These ones are stale Benson & Hedges, the silver ones, presumably Josh’s. Not that ey would have needed them anyway.

Two years down the drain. She almost coughs when she leaves the smoke sitting in her lungs for a little too long, and she pops the little menthol pearl in the filter when she exhales. And two months, and then some. In the bluish smoke, the view from the deck looks irreal, like a drunken dream, although maybe that’s just the wispy November fog. The berry shrubs on the far side of the back garden are bare to their branches now, and the trees in the distance are going the same way. Even the cat-tail plants by the pond in the corner of her eye look parched and withered with the cold, and Dilys draws her jacket tighter around herself. The cigarette only makes it worse.

When she exhales again, a shudder comes out with it, but she much prefers the chill from the crisp air to stress jitters. Even if her jaw does chatter so much that she has to grab it to make it stop.

For the last couple months, since Josh decided ey was going to keep the baby, really, the air in the commune has had an erratic flicker to it. So smoking that cigarette is probably worth it just for that alone. Dilys puffs herself up like a skinny floral bird, as good as she can, and sinks her teeth into the paper of the filter. Of course, when it was just the two of them living together, Joe’s anxious episodes overwhelmed her enough, so she should’ve seen this coming from very far off.

Not Josh getting pregnant on accident, Dilys clarifies to herself, considering the odds on that were _astronomically_ small, or even any other stress factors in the house. Just this, the friction bound to occur when so many people live in the same space. Not like it was ever any different in the studio.

The sound of the patio door scares her up from her thoughts.

“Didn’t mean to startle you.”

The voice and the heavy footsteps from behind are both obviously Josh’s, so Dilys presumes the squeaky half-hello half-giggle that follows belongs to Hollie.

“It’s alright.” Dilys blows a thin strand of smoke out towards the tarp-covered swimming pool and really hopes the wind won’t blow it back to either the pregnant person or the toddler behind her. “Where’s Jules?”

“Still on the couch with Haz. We just wanted to see what you were doing out here, right, Baby Bear?”

In response, Hollie makes a noise that sounds like “yap,” and Dilys turns her head just in time to see her smack a chubby hand onto Josh’s cheek.

“Sorry, do you want me to put this out?”

“Don’t think that little bit of second-hand smoke is going to make a big difference with how messed up my kid is gonna end up.” Josh smiles, sneery and smug, and ey adds, “Considering the gene pool.”

“Still.” Dilys flicks the remaining half of her fag to the terrace tiles so she can squash it with her boot. She’d rather not let Josh know that she can’t finish it. Next, she asks, “Were they yours? The cigarettes?”

“Probably.” Josh rustles in eir coat, tensing and untensing eir arms to find a more comfortable position for emself and the kid, and ey says, “But it’s most likely they were Tom’s first and I nabbed them off him, so.”

“So in that case it’s okay,” Dilys quips, and she leans back against the porch railing. Maybe she should’ve worn gloves as well. “What are we doing out here, BB?”

The bear jokes started before Hollie was even born, Parent Bear and Baby Bear, but Dilys doesn’t remember which of them decided to run with it and actually call her that. From under her woolly panda-bear hat, Hollie now says, “Phone!”

“Yeah, Sophie was in the living room with us, but she’s on the phone.”

“Safi,” Dilys corrects on reflex.

“Safari.” Josh looks back over to Hollie and says, “Your auntie Starfire from the Teen Titans cartoon.”

That one makes Dilys ugly snort. “That’s not real.”

“Not my fault she picked out a name that’s so easy to butcher,” Josh asserts. Eir eyes briefly dart out to the fields in the distance, before ey adds, “Still better than getting called Francis.”

Dilys clears her throat and doesn’t know what to say in response to that. She still doesn’t understand the strange hate-love relationship Josh and Fari have, and she doesn’t think she ever will. Not that she thinks she’s missing out, either.

Instead, she asks, “Who is she talking to? Do you know?”

“She’s calling Pauline,” Josh says, and ey adjusts eir hold on Hollie one more time. “Been on the phone for a while now, I tried listening in for a while in case it was important.”

“Oh, do you want me to hold her for you?”

“If she wants to.” Josh puckers eir lips and puts on eir gentle kid voice to ask, “BB? Do you want to sit on Aunt Dilly’s arm instead?”

Hollie crows with agreement, and Josh makes a move to pass her over. For a split second, Dilys is thrown off-kilter by the sudden extra weight, but she adjusts quickly.

“Hello, Hollie,” she chirps.

Josh instructs, “Say _Hello, Dilly_ ,” and Hollie now smacks her tiny hand onto Dilys’ cheek and parrots, “Ello Dilly!”

Dilys doesn’t budge at the nickname, but she pecks a kiss onto Hollie’s forehead. Of course, she always knew how soft baby skin is, but she’s still surprised by how sweet it smells every time. Not to mention how different Hollie’s scent is from July’s.

Hollie babbles something that Dilys can’t pick up on, and Josh fidgets eir newly free hands into the front of eir dungarees.

“Is that so?” ey asks. “But yeah, couldn’t handle it after a while. It’s just stressful to think about now that there’s gonna be another baby in, like, a few weeks.”

Dilys huffs, and when more fog comes out this time, it’s her breath. Again, she doesn’t know what to say, and again, she can’t imagine understanding the situation Josh is in.

“Yeah, it’s…” she starts, and she kind of wishes she still had her cigarette. “It’s mad, isn’t it.”

That’s all she can come up with. At least the weight of the toddler in her arms keeps her steady where she is.

“At least with that baby we saw it coming from far away.” Josh started showing sometime last month, and when ey leans against the railing as well, the bump juts out at an angle. One of the fidgety hands comes up to pull on Josh’s floppy bottom lip, and ey says, “It's just that I'm stupid and that's why I keep creating stress situations and problems for myself, or something.”

That's definitely eir therapist's words, or at least some of it.

Out of reflex, Dilys assures, “Yeah,” before she quickly adds, “You're not _stupid_.”

Josh snorts, almost in disagreement. “Toxic self-image and all of that, innit.” Then, ey adds, “Still, definite clouding of judgement that was.” Again, ey flicks a thumb against eir lip, and ey says, “That's why you don't get pregnant, 'cause you have to think for two.” 

Dilys laughs, once again unsure how to respond, and she rocks Hollie in her hold, looking for a more comfortable position. Her arms already ache, a straining, sinewy hurt streamlined with all the bones, but judged by Hollie's giggles, she seems to enjoy it. 

“Better like this,” Dilys finally assesses, and to Josh, she says, “I don't know. I don't know anything about this.” She immediately wonders if she should've said that, but her mouth doesn’t stop talking. “Things just… everything just happens, random chance accident, you know. You can't analyse or calculate out the way life goes.” If she had a free hand, she'd gesticulate out the meaning to the words.

“Yeah, but I could've analysed my fertile cycle,” Josh deadpans and makes it immensely obvious just how stupid that previous statement was. Again, ey huffs, a white cloud big enough to veil eir face for a split second. “Really depressing conversation topics today.”

“Yeah, to be honest, I feel just as stressed now as I did when I decided I needed this smoke break in the first place,” Dilys says.

She looks over at the patio furniture, still wet with the earlier rain and long overdue to be taken inside, and then back to Josh and Hollie. The resemblance between them is already obvious, the same dark hair and hazel-green eyes, similar upturned nose, even if Hollie has a little birthmark to one side of it. For some reason, that observation makes Dilys feel better, if only a little. She's a little too aware of it when her heart does a little jump in her chest, and she blinks away a small tear.

“What do you think, Baby Bear?”

“Hollie?” Josh repeat-asks. “Tell Dilly what you want?”

With that, Hollie's face cracks into a toothy smile, and she says, “Am hungy.” 

“Hungry,” Dilys corrects automatically. “ _Arrrrrrrrrr_.”

Josh only grins, and Dilys briefly wonders whether Hollie will also grow up to have tiny fangs like ey does. Then, ey says, “Yeah, the other reason we came out here is 'cause we're hungy and it's your go on the cooking rota.” 

Dilys had almost forgotten about that. She quickly checks the time on her phone, less than an hour until Joe and Rachel will be back from town. 

“Might as well crack on with it.”

Joe's latest session musician work is with some European two-piece band that she can't remember the name of, and Rachel's composing another film soundtrack with a full-scale orchestra right now, although Dilys can't remember the name of the movie either. 

“Anything in particular you're craving for?”

“Just a good curry, that'll do.” Josh's mouth contorts as if looking for what to say next, and ey says, “I'm mainly craving eggs right now, though, if you want to fry me an egg too. Eggs and peanut butter.”

Hollie repeats the _peanut butter_ , although it doesn’t sound too much like that. Dilys remembers Josh's peanut butter cravings from eir first pregnancy, and at the same moment, she remembers something else. 

“My mum always used to say,” she says. “If you're craving sweet things when you're pregnant, you'll have a girl, and if it's sour, like pickles, it'll be a boy.” Although she's not sure she remembers the reasoning, too. “Not sure what it's supposed to signify when you're craving, like, savoury protein-y things.”

“Umami,” Josh says. “Congratulations, it's a Josh.”

“It's a bear,” Dilys corrects.

“Also shows just how much your mum knows about gender, doesn’t it?”

Dilys laughs in agreement. “Apparently it did clear up a lot of things when I came out as trans, 'cause the whole time she was pregnant with me she was eating nothing but dates.” 

“Dates,” Josh repeats, face scrunched up in disbelief or possibly disgust.

Dilys never liked dates much either, to be fair. “Dates and cinnamon-y things,” she says. In spite of the cold, her stomach rumbles now, like all that talk of food suddenly made her remember she barely ate all day. “Hollie?” she asks, “Baby Bear? Do you wanna go back inside?” 

When they return to the warm cavern of the living room, Hollie walking along at Josh's hand, Fari seems to be on the phone with someone else, because she's currently spelling out her name to them. 

When she gets to the end of it, she repeats, “Safiya Fari Badwan. Did you note that down?” A pause, then, “Yes, I'll hold.” 

“Who's she talking to?” Dilys stage-whispers to Harry, who's still sitting on the other sofa with July by her side.

“She remembered she was going to ring the adoption agency,” Harry says back, and to July, “Jules? Mum's here.”

July looks up from the tablet in her lap, eyes instantly big and sparkly when she waves out one hand. “Ello Mama!” 

“Hey Babes.” Dilys leans down and meets July's hand with her balled fist. “I'm gonna make dinner now. We're having curry. What d'you think of that?”

July says, in her chirpy voice, “Fishenchips?” 

“Not fish and chips, curry. But we can have fish and chips on the weekend, okay?”

Harry says, “I'll try to sell her on the idea of it.” 

Fari says, “I'll help if you like,” and presses down on her phone's screen to put the MOH on speaker. 

Harry turns to her niece tucked beneath her arm once more, and Dilys takes that as her cue to wave one more time and go to the kitchen, Fari and the easy-listening tootling tune in tow. 

“I feel R's going to be cross with me when she gets back 'cause I said I'd call them about three days ago,” Fari says, and the fridge beeps when she opens it.

“At least you remembered at all,” Dilys says back. She almost forgot about that altogether.

While Fari takes the veg out of the fridge, Dilys gathers the other ingredients from the cabinets. Through the open doorway, she can hear July's insistent “I want fishenchips,” and that almost makes her laugh. Finally, Dilys picks up two eggs, too, just in case. 

While Fari cuts courgette and Dilys browns the onions, the hold music switches to a cover of a Pulp song, but not a particularly good one. 

Fari says, “I fucking hate this song.” 

Dilys hums along to it without meaning to when she adds the chopped tomato. In the living room, someone, probably Harry, has put on the A-side of _Yellow Submarine_ again since the kids like it so much. The crackle of the old vinyl clashes horribly with the easy-listening singer's polished voice. 

“So,” she says next when she adds the seasoning. Only a pinch of chilli powder, to keep it mild for the kids, but plenty of cumin and turmeric to compensate. Then, Dilys says, “About Josh.”

“What about em?”

Fari uses the side of the knife to shove all the cubes of courgette off to one end of the chopping board, and she grabs a whole potato next. 

“If you'd noticed anything about em,” Dilys elaborates. She sprinkles in some scallions from the garden, even if she doubts that scallions normally belong in curry.

“Lots of things to notice about Josh,” Fari says n her deadpan voice. “Ey's four months pregnant. Touched up the undercut yesterday. Ey's got new…”

Dilys is _sure_ she's being wilfully obtuse now and coughs to interrupt. “You know what I'm talking about, like, eir mental state.”

She uses the wooden spoon to push the base ingredients of the curry around and across each other, and contemplates which veg to add first. Already, it smells good enough for her stomach to clench.

“Since ey doesn't let me get closer than that whole prickly-bear attitude.” 

Dilys didn't actually intend to say _bear_.

“I don't know, either.” 

Fari moves on to the second potato. For a split second, Dilys worries she'll segue into another non-answer. 

“I reckon it's a lot better than eir first pregnancy. Surprisingly.” 

Dilys adds the first potato to the pot and thinks that over for a split second, before she decides it's not really _surprising_.

Instead, she says, “Still a big spectrum.” 

Fari huffs a sound that could be a laugh. “Ey's only just hit second trimester. Maybe the crazy picks up from there.” Next, she pushes the second chopped potato into the curry, not that Dilys asked her to. 

The hold music now plays that one Beautiful South song, and Dilys briefly wonders whether that's the kind of message an adoption agency wants to send. Even if it's the censored version. 

Fari continues, “That's not something to joke about,” and sets about cutting a marinated chicken breast into stripes. “Ey's holding up so far.” 

“But you're holding up, too,” Dilys says and immediately wonders if that's presumptuous, and why her brain decided to go into that direction, too. She adds the leaves of spinach to the curry and tips in the courgette after them. “Right?” 

“I'd say I am,” Fari says down at her hands working precisely. “It's stressful, obviously, since Pauline is due in two weeks now, but…” 

“Holding up,” Dilys repeats. 

“I'd say we're holding each other up.” 

The adoption agency doesn't ever get back to Fari. 

By the time the curry is done, Joe and Rachel have just arrived home from work, and Tom and Issie are back from feeding the animals, too. Around the big dinner table, the air is already busy with snippets of conversation when Fari and Dilys bring the food inside. Fari sits between Rachel and Josh, and she passes em eir scrambled eggs, while Dilys takes her seat at one far end so she can heap rice and curry onto everyone's plates. 

“You seriously just hung up on them?” Rachel asks. 

“They left me on hold for over twenty minutes,” Fari says back, in her deadpan that somehow still manages to sound accusing. 

Somewhere down the table, Issie's sweet-talking voice tells July about the goats and the chickens, that they found _four_ eggs in the coop today, and July knows how much four is. At the far side, Joe is telling Tom about the modular synth one of the Europeans brought in today. All the din of voices in the air gets interrupted and replaced by the clattering of cutlery, and finally, Dilys digs into her own dinner as well. 

“I could just tell from the way she was talking to me that that woman wasn't taking me seriously,” Fari continues, and she must still be on the same topic from earlier. 

Harry is helping July with her food tonight, and Dilys is more than thankful for that when she shovels a messy spoonful of rice and chicken into her mouth. The first gulp almost hurts down in her belly, but it's a good hurt, and she quickly scrapes up another spoon. 

“Maybe you should ring them next time, you're the professional woman between us.” 

“Professional at being a woman,” Josh deadpans. Ey continues to fork the veg and chicken on Hollie's plate into bite-sized pieces, and ey asks, “What did you and Pauline agree to?” 

“She's coming over for tea on Thursday.” 

Fari fidgets, Dilys can hear that without looking up from her plate, a rhythmic bounce of her cutlery against the ceramic. 

“I convinced her it'd be less effort for all of us if we bought her a train ticket from London, so someone's gonna pick her up from the station.” 

Josh says, “I'll drive her.” 

With her mouth still half-full of food, Fari continues, “Mainly I want to check up how she's doing, obviously. But there’s some stuff we still haven't finished sorting out, like where we'll all be when she goes into labour and during the delivery, and the six weeks until we can sign the order.”

“I don't wanna be there for when she delivers,” Josh cuts in and stuffs a bit of egg into eir mouth. “No offence, but I've already witnessed one of my babies being born, and I'm not repeating that experience more often than I have to.” 

“Delightful conversation topic to have for tea,” says Rachel. 

“But yeah,” says Fari, and she repeats, “Lots of stuff sorting out, which I'd rather not think about until Thursday but will probably have to.” 

“No offence,” says Tom from the other end of the table. “But having kids sounds like such a hassle.” 

“ _Raising_ kids is a hassle,” Josh corrects. “A hopefully worthwhile, terrific, great hassle.” 

“Worthwhile,” Dilys repeats, as it doesn't strike her as a very good choice of word. 

Josh elaborates. “As in, hopefully that hassle you put in is enough to keep you from screwing your kids up forever.” 

Ey turns away to feed another spoonful of rice and chicken to Hollie, and Fari picks up where ey left off. 

“I won't even technically have a kid for another few weeks but I'm already worried I'll make all the mistakes my parents did.”

From Josh, and Joe and Issie, and Tom, comes a resounding hum. 

“It's like that poem you had to read in sixth form, innit,” Josh says. “Your mum and dad, man hands misery to man, etcetera.” 

“The Larkin one,” Issie suggests. 

“I kept the copy my teacher gave out with all my riot grrrl stuff, all the lyrics from songs I used to write down and stuff,” Josh continues. “Like some kind of grim reminder to myself.” 

Fari says, “That was a terrible poem.” 

“It was,” Joe says. “I think I still know some of it by heart.” 

Dilys shakes her head to herself and throws a glance at the two people nearest to her at the table, who happen to be Harry and Rachel. She barely even remembers the poem in question. 

Harry only quirks one corner of her mouth in amusement, but Rachel shakes her head in turn. 

Joe taps the side of his glass lightly with the handle of his spoon, which might have been a grand gesture if it wasn't a child-safe plastic cup.

He begins, “ _They mess you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do._ ”

Josh joins in on the next line, and Issie on the one after. “ _They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you._

“ _But they were messed up in their turn / By fools in old-style hats and coats._ ”

Now, it's Tom and Fari who join the chorus. “ _Who half the time were soppy-stern / And half in one another's throats._ ”

The din around the table sounds like a paradox sombre celebration, the mood of a funeral without the respectful silence, or maybe some kind of cultist ritual. How many free-love hippie communes turned out to be cults, again?

The great chorus recites, “ _Man hands on misery to man. / It deepens like a coastal shelf_ ,” but for the last couplet, most of the voices disappear. “ _Get out as early as you can, / And don't have any kids yourself._ ”

After the second that the final statement hangs in the air, the clatter of the cutlery almost sounds like applause.

Dilys shakes her head, again, and again for good measure. Then, she tuts. “So negative.”

After that, she realises the record from earlier is still on. Or, much more likely, someone set the record player to the endless loop, and it's on _again_ , and at the same time, she recognises the song that now fades in.

Dilys throws another quick glance to her left and right, before she begins to sing.

“ _There's nothing you can do that can't be done / Nothing you can sing that can't be sung_.”

Rachel has already joined in by that point, her airy voice a nice contrast to Dilys' contralto, and Harry now follows, too. “ _Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game. It's easy._ ”

Josh says, quietly, “You know what the acronym for that song is,” but that doesn't stop em from eventually joining in.

“ _Nothing you can do / But you can learn how to be you / In time, it's easy._ ”

By the time the chorus comes, the whole table sings along. “ _All you need is love / All you need is love._ ”

And Dilys almost feels like crying again.

“ _All you need is love, love / Love is all you need._ ”

When the vocals ebb off for the mid-song instrumental, they all burst out into actual applause, a small firework explosion of cheers. Dilys wipes her eyes on her sleeve before she turns left, then right, to hug Harry and then Rachel, and before she leans halfway over the table so she can hug Fari, too.

In the chaos that follows, they all only notice Hollie flipping her plate of curry once it's too late.

**Author's Note:**

> the poem Joe recites is, of course, "This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin. also, not that I think anyone wouldn't know it, but the song is "All You Need Is Love" by The Beatles.


End file.
